There is something puzzling that bothers me, even though I have things working again.
I first lost access to the AEBS when I tried to use Airport Utility to change the security setting of my network. It has been on the default WPA2 setting, and I was wanting to downgrade that to WEP because the long WPA password was too long to be accepted by my Palm TX Wifi software. But the shorter WEP password shouldn't have been a problem. At the time, after my system reinstall, the utility and the base station seemed to be working all right.
When I completed resetting the base station with WEP, though, there was an error message, after which I could no longer connect to the network with my laptop (using the old password or the new password), and then the utility lost sight of the base station as well. I had to do a hard reset and start over. When I did the same thing again, the same thing happened. When I reconfigured the base station with the WPA2 security, though, it all worked, and my laptop could get back online.
At this point I tried changing it again to WEP, and the same problem recurred. One last time with WPA2, and that's where I am now, except that I was pleased to find that my PDA, which had just been replaced under warranty, has some newer software in it and it now can accept my passkey (?)-- my airport code rather than the 64(?)-digit number version of it, so it's working, too.
But apparently Airport Utility has lost sight of the base station again. I don't need it for anything, but this is annoying. What's more curious, though, is what was happening when I chose WEP security.